< BackResearch FacultyArthur Toga, PhD

Arthur Toga, PhD

Division: affiliated-faculty

Provost Professor of Ophthalmology, Neurology, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Radiology and Engineering at the Keck School of Medicine USC; Director, USC Institute of Neuroimaging and Informatics; Director, USC Laboratory of Neuro Imaging

Research Interests:

Dr. Arthur Toga has been at the leading edge of the complex frontier of brain imaging for over two decades. His research focuses on neuroimaging, informatics, mapping brain structure and function, and brain atlasing. Dr. Toga developed multimodal imaging and data aggregation strategies and applied them in a variety of neurological diseases and psychiatric disorders. His work in informatics includes the development and implementation of some of the largest and most widely used databases and data mining tools linking disparate data from genetics, imaging, clinical and behavior, supporting global efforts in Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s and Parkinson’s disease. His work includes measurement of the dynamic brain during development and aging and as a result of insult. For example, his studies include changes following traumatic brain injury and sensory deprivation on the connectome. In addition to this, Dr. Toga and his team are just initiating studies to answer fundamental question in the relationship between eye disease and its relationship to the central visual processing; specifically, they are attempting to answer questions such as, How does the precise topography of eye disease map onto changes in brain? Is acquired retinal and optic nerve damage in diseases such as glaucoma, macular degeneration related to local effects upon the structure and function of central pathways? Are any of these effects of vision loss on central pathways reversible? His work, combining advanced retinal imaging with the brain-mapping techniques developed in the Human Connectome Project (HCP) using novel yet robust analytical methods, may help answer these questions.

Biography:

Toga is Director of the Institute of Neuroimaging and Informatics and Provost Professor with a primary appointment in the Department of Ophthalmology. He was trained in neuroscience and computer science and has written more than 1,000 papers, chapters and abstracts, including eight books. Recruited to USC in 2013, he also directs the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging. This 110-member laboratory includes graduate students from computer science, biostatistics and neuroscience. It is funded with grants from the National Institutes of Health grants as well as industry partners. He has received numerous awards and honors in computer science, graphics and neuroscience. Prior to coming to USC he was a Distinguished Professor Neurology at UCLA, held the Geffen Chair of Informatics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Associate Director of the UCLA Brain Mapping Division within the Neuropsychiatric Institute, and Associate Dean, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal NeuroImage and holds the chairmanship of numerous committees within NIH and a variety of international task forces.

List of Publications:

  • Novak NM, Stein JL, Medland SE, Hibar DP, Thompson PM & Toga AW.  EnigmaVis: Online interactive visualization of genome-wide association studies of the Enhancing NeuroImaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis (ENIGMA) Consortium. Twin Res Hum Genet. 2012, 15(3):414-8.
  • Toga AW, Clark KA, Thompson PM, Shattuck DW & Van Horn JD. Mapping the human connectome. Neurosurgery, 2012, 71(1):1-5.

Education:

  • PhD, Neuroscience

Other web profiles:

www.loni.usc.edu/about_loni/people/indiv_detail.php